As a hotelier, café, restaurant, bar or as a supplier of food and beverage, furniture, Interiors, beds and bedding, towels, table linen, interiors, carpets, flooring, lighting, toiletries, cleaning materials, kitchen equipment, energy, water, waste management, Sustainability is now the most important aspect to consider in your business sector. Sustainability is changing the global world rapidly for your suppliers, clients, consumers and can affect your business reputation.
The hospitality industry encompasses so many sub sectors within it. The built environment, food and beverage, toiletries, property management, interiors, furniture, textiles – including bed linen, towels, curtains, carpets, to name a few. These subsectors also create significant environmental and social impacts, both positive and negative. Energy use, waste generation, water, vulnerability to modern slavery are all considerations and risks that the industry needs to be aware of and manage.
Do you know what impacts your organisation is having on people or on the environment in the locations that you operate in?
Do you have policies in place for mitigating Modern Slavery, trafficking or child labour in your business? Do you have fair wage and policies in place to attract the best employees to your business? Have you put policies in place to ensure decent working conditions? Are you able to ensure these policies are complied with along your supply chains all the way to raw material?
Are you aware of how increased usage of water, energy and lighting in your business affects the environment and some local communities that you operate in, or that your raw material and supply chains are operating in? Can you reduce these impacts and also benefit form the cost savings these reductions can make to the profitability of your business?
Your Food and Beverage supply chains – Biodiversity, water, land use are all affected by climate change (e.g. unpredictable seasons and extended drought periods), but so is your quantity, quality and supply chain security. Have you future-proofed your business to take this into account in the products you consume and in the services you supply to your clients?
Do you know how much waste your products & services create? Could you reuse, recycle, regenerate more within your business?
Could you design waste out of your supply chains or could your waste be used for other products and innovations, in your company or in other companies?
Could you improve your business profitability by changing your approach to waste as an opportunity for a renewed resource?
Do you build into your products and packaging a solution for their end of life, e.g. recycling, re-use, collection and disposal?
* This is not an exclusive list of questions to consider.